From the top of the cliff she looked back, and saw that he was still standing—­a squat, fantastic figure like a goblin out of a fairy-tale—­outlined against the shining sea behind him, a blot upon the blue.

Again she waved to him and he lifted one of his long arms and saluted her again in answer—­stood at the salute till she turned away.

“Poor boy!” she murmured compassionately.  “Poor ruined child!  Columbus, we must be kind to him.”

And Columbus looked up with knowing little eyes and wagged a smiling tail.  He had taken to the lad himself.

CHAPTER II

SACRIFICE

“Lor’ bless you!” said Mrs. Rickett.  “There’s some folks as thinks young Robin is the plague of the neighbourhood, but there ain’t no harm in the lad if he’s let alone.  It’s when them little varmints of village boys, sets on to him and teases him as he ain’t safe.  But let him be, and he’s as quiet as a lamb.  O’ course if they great hulking fools on the shore goes and takes him into The Three Tuns, you can’t expect him to behave respectable.  But as I always says, let him alone and there’s no vice in him.  Why, I’ve seen him go away into a corner and cry like a baby at a sharp word from his brother Dick.  He sets such store by him.”

“I noticed that,” said Juliet.  “In fact he told me that Dicky and your baby were the only two people in the world that he loved.”

“Did he now?  Well, did you ever?” Mrs. Rickett’s weather-beaten countenance softened as it were in spite of itself.  “He always did take to my Freddy, right from the very first.  And Freddy’s just the same.  Soon as ever he catches sight of Robin, he’s all in a fever like to get to him.  Mr. Fielding from the Court, he were in here the other day and he see ’em together.  ‘Your baby’s got funny taste, Mrs. Rickett,’ he says and laughs.  And I says to him, ’There’s a many worse than poor young Robin, sir,’ I says.  ‘And in our own village too.’  You see, Mr. Fielding he’s one of them gentlemen as likes to have the managing of other folks’ affairs and he’s always been on to Dick to have poor Robin put away.  But Dick won’t hear of it, and I don’t blame him.  For, as I say, there’s no harm in the lad if he’s treated proper, and he’d break his heart if they was to send him away.  And he’s that devoted to Dick too—­well, there, it fair makes me cry sometimes to see him.  He’ll sit and wait for him by the hour together, like a dog he will.”

“Was he born like that?” asked Juliet, as her informant paused for breath.

Mrs. Rickett pursed her lips.  “Well, you see, miss, he were a twin, and he never did thrive from the very earliest.  But he wasn’t a hunchback, not like he is now, at first.  The poor mother died when they was born, and p’raps it were a good thing, for she’d have grieved terrible if she could have seen what he were a-going to grow into.  For she was a lady born and bred,